Man, the AHA/BA is definitely having a tough year. With NHC and 1st round issues, now it looks like there's issue with GABF tickets and a bunch of brewers pissed off they got shut out from attending...and some big names too.

I really don't understand saving tickets for tomorrow. If the membership can sell this event out today, let them!

looks like somewhere around 23 minutes for the AHA members to sell out the portion of Th/Fri/Sat afternoon tickets that they were willing to sell to us.

Disagree. There are plenty of people who don't want to get into home brewing and have no need to buy a membership to the AHA, but would love to go to the festival to experience it, and they should be able to, so it is more than fair to sell them to the public tomorrow.

Just try again and hope you get through. It's what I'll be doing.

My bigger complaint is that it said I had 4 tickets for Friday in my "cart", but when I tried to go to the next step they were no longer available. WTF?

I really don't understand saving tickets for tomorrow. If the membership can sell this event out today, let them!

looks like somewhere around 23 minutes for the AHA members to sell out the portion of Th/Fri/Sat afternoon tickets that they were willing to sell to us.

Disagree. There are plenty of people who don't want to get into home brewing and have no need to buy a membership to the AHA, but would love to go to the festival to experience it, and they should be able to, so it is more than fair to sell them to the public tomorrow.

Just try again and hope you get through. It's what I'll be doing.

My bigger complaint is that it said I had 4 tickets for Friday in my "cart", but when I tried to go to the next step they were no longer available. WTF?

that's cool, we'll just agree to disagree on that one.did you ever get the tickets back in your cart, or did you miss out?

I had the same problems too. TM wouldn't accept member code. Then went to email and used the direct access to ticket thing then the code was accepted but then high demand messages at 10:05 Tried all days and I started right at 10:00. Looks like I've been shut out again!! I joined the Brewers Association so I could get in on the pre sale to avoid that problem. Was trying for Friday session. So pissed right now.

I had the same problem (would not take AHA # for saturday session). Happened to a buddy as well.

I did eventually get in after about 15-20 minutes and score 2 tickets to saturday. EVERY thing about eh ticketmaster site worked perfectly fine for me, except the AHA number acceptance. No idea if my friend ever got through though.

Sorry, but the AHA is "0 for a year and a half" on their events in my opinion. Sure there is demand. There is more demand for a lot of things though. Why is EVERY one of their events a CF to participate in? Pretty frustrating.

"Hello AHA members! For those of you who participated or tried to participate in the Great American Beer Festival member pre-sale this morning, here's an update:

Unfortunately, Ticketmaster experienced a problem with recognizing some member numbers during the member pre-sale for the Saturday Afternoon Members Only session. They worked to resolve the problem as soon as they could. Once the problem was fixed, all tickets for the Saturday Afternoon Members Only session were purchased nearly immediately. We sincerely regret the difficulty that some of our members experienced.

Similarly, tickets for Thursday evening and Friday evening General Sessions sold out in a matter of minutes as well, without any technical difficulties.

As of this post, some Saturday evening tickets remain available in the pre-sale, though they are selling fast. Tickets for each evening session will be available in tomorrow's (July 31) public ticket sale.

Thanks for your patience and your support of the AHA."

Logged

Jeremy Baker

"An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience." - Mitch Hedberg

that's cool, we'll just agree to disagree on that one.did you ever get the tickets back in your cart, or did you miss out?

Nope, never got them back. It kept reloading the page on my Thursday tickets (like 20 times on it's own) and then said I didn't get them either, but then I got an e-mail with a receipt for my purchase and two tickets.

Wasn't trying to start fireworks on the ticket thing. Here to bring insightful thoughts to the board, not troll!

Will Saturday afternoon tickets be on sale tomorrow too or are they all gone today?

My buddy sent me a screen shot of their Facebook and it said that tickets will be available for the night sessions, but it didn't specify the members only part on Saturday. I'd bet they are sold out of that for good?

GABF is going to have to take notice of how fast it's sold out the last two years and start preparations for either more tix next year or the ability to handle the demand. It's just growing in popularity faster than they have prepared for it. Happens to every business.

What's sad is that while the "issue" was ongoing, tickets appeared on Craigslist and Ticketvenue for all sessions at around $300 each!! I get the feeling that the "issue" allowed scalpers (yes, they had to have been members, but from a cost-benefit standpoint...) to get their tickets.

TM says they have measures in place to prevent this, but while refreshing my browser to attempt to get afternoon tickets, I saw the same phrase at least a dozen times. I've seen stronger security on my Yahoo! email, and that's been hacked more times than I care to recall.

As far as I'm concerned, this was a poorly executed pre-sale. It was intended to allow us - the card carrying members of the AHA/BA - to get tickets and access that the general public can't. The intent failed miserably, and the organizers simply offer condolences in the form of "well, there's always next year."